Category Archives: NolanChart

So I finished hanging the last of 900 of the little beauties at left today, in a 4 hour marathon walk that might have been a marathon in length. Frankly I lost track of how far I walked. I found myself wondering several times “just how many of these things do I have left?”

In the end I ran out of door hangers before I ran out of doors to hang them on.

The important part of the Quiz across Texas (a statewide effort to distribute 250,000 door hangers and other campaign materials) the part that makes it worth my time to participate, is the quiz itself.

Changing politics as usual in the United States means redefining what politics means; and that starts with education. The left-right line that has traditionally been used to illustrate political thought is completely inadequate for the task. The Nolan Chart, and the World’s Smallest Political Quiz that has evolved from it, is one of the best ways to illustrate the real range of political opinion that can be found in society.

Getting the quiz into the hands of people who have never seen it before, is a good place to start the education process. I’m proud to have been a part of this.

For those people (and I know you are out there) who wonder about the origins of the Nolan Chart and the World’s Smallest Political Quiz, Check out the Wiki entry on the subject.

And for those other people (I’ve run across a few of you, too) who think that the WSPQ is too simplistic, check out this enhanced version of the quiz (with go fast stripes even) authored by an LP activist in North Carolina.

Mea culpa review 2017. I have eaten a Big Bowl of Crow since publishing this and other thoughts on many subjects. As this is a Nolan chart entry I will take a bit of time to explain the problems that arise with the second metric for measuring political orientation in the chart as it was conceived.

The problem is quite easy to expose. The first metric is social freedom. A solid majority of people agree with most of the questions involving social freedom. Nearly everyone who claims conservatism publicly is someone who is careful to say they are socially liberal and fiscally conservative. This is where the problem lies. The second metric is economic freedom. What, exactly, is economic freedom and how is it achieved? Every question on the World’s Smallest Political Quiz comes at this question as if money was archetypal, foundational, a recognizable concrete that we can all agree on.

However, money is nothing of the sort and the origin of money is not what most people think it is. Value is not found in commodities because they exist; rather value is subjectively assigned to commodities based on the desire of the individual and so varies based on subjective factors such as hunger, rest, thirst, security, etc. If you are dying of thirst everything you have is what that drink of water is worth. That is hardly the basis for measuring economic freedom.

More to come when I get around to writing the EPHN dealing with money and economics.